bought/gift/made 21

BOUGHT
Dr Bronner's Castile Soap (rose)
It gets rave reviews and I'm also giving it a rave review.  It smells divine. It's vegan, with no synthetic ingredients, is nontoxic & biodegradable and still, lathers moisturises and cleanses. Tick Tick.  Our friend recently stocked us up with the dishwashing version and a peppermint version which I'm excited to try out.

MADE
After finishing our mosaic staircase project we were on a mosaic roll and decided to make our house a number plaque.  We're currently training creepers to cover our brick wall so I'm excited when the pop of colour peeks out through the green leaves!

GIFT
An oldie but a goodie.  When Dad was clearing out his Mum's shed (years back now!) I found this lidded basket and asked if I could keep it.  My grandma was a big fan of cane and bamboo - a family love that I've happily inherited.

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Leopard Jungle Mosaic

After completing the stair mosaic, I was inspired to create another mosaic.  I had the idea to mosaic the front panel of our bathtub.  My inspiration was a jungle design that you could find in an ancient Roman bathhouse and my catchphrase was "keep it classy".  It took many weeks of planning, cutting, gluing, and arranging before Ben and I finally stuck it in place.  As soon as we stepped back from our bath I knew the placement was 100% wrong.  Our bath runs parrel to the wall and our bathroom isn't a huge space, so the mosaic could only be seen on an angle that hid the design.  Conscious of the glue setting time (only a few minutes) we pulled it off the bath and ran around the house to find another location.  Ben wanted to stick it to the side of our home but I wasn't convinced, so we settled onto the side of a carport :) Much better!

Laying and gluing the design onto the mesh.  My original drawing sits under the mesh so I can see where to add the different colours. 

Almost there! Just need to add in the grout.  You can see some sections where I've applied the tile adhesive too thickly and it has pushed through the mesh, don't copy that! :P

And the finished design after grouting (hard to get a good photo because it's so long!) 

I wanted this project to use leftover materials from our other mosaic projects, so the grout ended up as a grey tone from the leftover white and black grout powder. 

The leopard! 

In the beginning, I was so disappointed because only a few bright yellow pieces were available.  That limitation forced me to get creative and to use some gold and plain clay shards.  I'm so so happy I had to get creative because it ended up being a more dynamic design with the different shades.

I love mosaicing because it's very similar (although more forgiving!) to putting together a puzzle

One of my favourite features is that little burgundy tile as the palm berry

I also love his little eye too!

and I'm a sucker for those blues floating in the background - helping to break it up.

The piece in it's installed glory :)

I'm happy to give mosaics a rest for a while.  Also happy to have our lounge room cleared and not filled with piles and piles of tiny ceramic pieces :P

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Nimbin

My birthday has just been and I've found the key for a successful day is to plan something in advance to prevent moping around and feeling sorry for myself :P My plans usually involve super fee-centric stuff that Ben would probably not be super keen for on a normal given day!

We ended up in Northern NSW, doing some op shopping, visiting crystal castle (a blog to come on that!) and checking out the local towns.  We did some glamping in Nimbin at a place called Nimbin Rox (a delightful pun as the town has some beautiful rock formation as you drive into it). Nimbin, if you don't know is perhaps the only place in Australia where you can opening buy weed which is currently illegal here in Oz.  Ben and I were asked around 8 times if we needed anything, which may or may not scare some people off visiting (or entice others) but honestly it's a sweet little town to check out and I can personally vouch for the corner stores sourdough!

Our glamping adventures!

 The real nimbin rocks

Some wallabies at our campsite :)

Just a little glimpse!

I'll be back to share our day at Crystal Castle which made my nerdy little hippy heart, super happy!

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Mosaic Making

I think I hinted at something fun I wanted to share previously, well today's the day to share my adventures in mosaics! Ben's cousin Carmen stayed with us over the holiday period and she was kind enough to teach us her expertise. I was instantly sold at how fun and beautiful the art of mosaics could be :) Since I'm all about flowers this year, I thought a classic rose would be the perfect design for a plain paver in our yard.

I still can't believe I made that! It was the perfect combo between things I love, puzzles, design and colours with a practical end result :)

After smashing, cutting, assembling and gluing our pieces the night before, the morning was spent grouting and this is where the photos are from :)

This was my piece pre-grout

And now, cue the photos of Carmen being a great teacher!

On the right is Carmen's finished piece that she left with us and which we promptly put up in our home :)

My guy post-grouted

The brick on the very end was a quick throw away piece to use up any left over grout. The shell planter was Ben's Mum who also stayed with us :)

Some close ups: I used a ceramic moon and two ceramic butterflies as well, which has given Ben and I lots of ideas to merge our ceramics with this new hobby. Ben, by the way, did this amazing turtle but he worked slower than the rest of use and had to grout his piece the next day.

Every time I go out into the garden or step onto the paver, I get this wave of proudness! 

Creating is so fun :) 

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